Newgeography: The Luxury City vs. the Middle ClassIf you think you noticed this during the boom times, you were most likely not mistaken. In many cities in the US, the city is reserved as the exclusive province of the unattached - those with no children or grown children - who would merely consume the fabulous bounty of consumable goods and services the city would provide. As middle class families leave cities behind, only the poor and the affluent remain.

Newgeography.com: Euroburbia: A Personal ViewEurope has sprawling suburbs too, despite what romantic urbanists may wish to believe. Social stratification is alive and well for many of the same reasons it is alive and well in America.

September 16, 2010

Reno: Analyzing RTC RIDE

The RTC of Washoe County today held an Open House to get the public’s input on the future of the regular, fixed-route public transit service they operate. I was unable to make it, being out of town, but I still did some thinking on the subject that when all is said and done, makes for an interesting report.

The first thing I did was think through my “pet” service change regarding bus service in the route 13/19 area (Wells Ave neighborhood and old SE Reno). The second thing I did was build a spreadsheet of the bus routes in town and their usefulness by my measures. See the whole shebang after the jump.

So. The 13/19. Lately I have been of the mindset that the 19 is either the most useful bus in town or the least useful, depending on when you want to ride it. The 13 was much more useful when it ran more than once an hour. The 19 runs on Wells Ave and goes to the airport, the 13 runs for some mystifying reason on the Locust/Kirman couplet and goes, well, as far as I can tell, to Costco. The 19 runs from 6:45 am – 5:45 pm M-F, once an hour. So it is pretty useless, especially for a bus that goes right down a major city arterial. The 13 on the other hand runs from 6 am – midnight 7 days a week, albeit once an hour, though the route it runs seems quite inefficient.

Route 13 and 19, before I take the axe to them.

One thing you’ll notice about the 13 and the 19, and by extension the 9 which runs next to the 13 and 19, is that they make all kinds of nutty loops for no apparent reason. Another thing is that they duck down side streets to make these loops, in neighborhoods which are a short walk from the nearest arterial. When I am riding a bus, I have already accepted that my legs are part of my vehicular configuration and I am willing to walk up to a little over a quarter of a mile to get to my bus stop, especially in Reno. It is very strange that these buses are routed this way.

13 and 19, and 9 – after I take the axe to them.

What I’ve ended up with is elimination of the 13 entirely. I’ve eliminated the nutty loop that the old 19 used to run so that it would go by the social security office, and I’ve eliminated the dive into the Linden/Grove neighborhood, because that neighborhood is located immediately adjacent to both Kietzke Lane and South Virginia Street. The 9 runs at a 15 minute interval on weekdays, and with decent (for Reno) frequencies on the weekend. RAPID, and RAPID connect, provide excellent service downtown and to Meadowwood 7 days a week.

I estimate that the new 19 might be able to run twice an hour much of weekdays, and once an hour on the 13’s old schedule, 7 days a week. This is an obvious improvement and adds the bonus that Wells Ave is served by a bus regularly, all day every day.

The 9 benefits by having to make less turns for no apparent reason. The connectivity between the two routes is strengthened by the frequency and intersection at Kietzke and Plumb.

Next order of business was to look at what it is that’s going on in the bus system in Reno today, in terms of usefulness.

Confessions of a spreadsheet junkie

Jarrett Walker, a public transit consultant from good ole’ US of A who is living and working in Australia currently (if you like transit, read his blog!), has been on recently about the concept of the frequent network map. The basic idea is that when you look at a bus system map, you should be able to tell at a glance which buses you can actually depend on and which buses are for some specific subset of the population. You should ideally not even need a schedule to tell you information such as how frequently buses come. A good analogy is a road map. The freeway is a much wider line than the street you live on, most likely, as is the nearest arterial wider than a residential street and narrower than the freeway. This is because these roads have different capacity, flow-through, and access to major destinations. So why are all the lines on a bus map the same width?

A frequent network map would be a special map that has the routes which are particularly reliable – ie, routes you don’t have to plan your life around. If you’ve ever read this blog before, you will know that it is my belief that if a bus system is going to be used by more than just those with no other option, it must be truly useful as a full-time transportation option for a large swath of the population. I’ve come to accept that one bus an hour most of the day 7 days a week is “good” in Reno so the spreadsheet I built allowed me to narrow my list down to routes which meet those criteria.

Reno/Sparks “good” routes

So all is not lost.

Now, there are some changes that having these data assembled conveniently and some other ideas from pattern analysis, I’d also be likely to suggest – and I’ll do my best to work up those thoughts over time and put them here. Meanwhile as always if you’ve reached the end and you have thoughts of your own, please put them in the comments!